Regula 's size, shape and colour was very similar to that of a Danish coast guard vessel.
'Launch Smithy,'
Beaurain had given this command when Firestorm 's radar scanner showed that the coast guard vessel Regula would shortly overhaul Kometa. The float plane hauled out of the same cavernous hold which had carried Regula, was winched over the side and gently lowered onto the calm black Baltic. From the bridge Beaurain watched with field glasses as Smithy took off on a course which would take him precisely between the stern of Kometa and the bow of Firestorm.
Beaurain had worked out the whole plan on the back of an old envelope. He now gave his third order.
'Launch Anderson.'
Captain Buckminster gave his own order, briefly slowing down the speed of Firestorm while Anderson, the pilot of the giant Sikorsky, lifted off from the helipad aft of the bridge. Alongside him sat his copilot, a Frenchman from Rheims, Pierre Cartier. Thirty-one years old, small, lightly-built with a pencil moustache, Cartier nursed a sub-machine gun in his lap as the chopper climbed vertically and flew on an easterly course. Like Smithy in his float-plane, their course was aimed for the stern of Kometa.
'You think I get a chance to use my weapon?' Cartier asked.
'Don't be so bloodthirsty,' Anderson replied, his eyes on the controls. 'That's just for emergencies,'
'Then I must hope for emergencies!'
On the bridge of the motor vessel Captain Buck-minster watched his radar screen as Beaurain walked a few paces to the huge bridge window and peered into the night. They had picked up speed as soon as Anderson had taken off and he thought he could just discern the lights of the Soviet hydrofoil.
'You think it's going to work?' Buckminster enquired.
'If I was in command of Kometa I would be as confused as hell within the next fifteen minutes. And we need only about ten minutes for Henderson and his underwater team to hit Kometa.'
'Let's hope to God it doesn't start moving and rear up on its foils. Henderson will never board her if that happens.'
'Which is why Phase One concerns a convincing-looking Danish coast guard launch,' Beaurain replied.
Captain Andrei Livanov swore silently as Viktor Rashkin appeared. The latter wore a dark blue naval blazer ornamented with gold buttons and pale grey slacks. His step was springy, his manner brisk. He established a sense of his supreme authority with his opening words.
'Our guests are now comfortable in the main dining-room, so our meeting is about to start. Please proceed at full speed round Bornholm as planned. Get this thing up onto its skis or whatever you call them.'
'Surface piercing foils.'
Livanov, a thin-faced man of fifty who hated having so many Germans aboard, was staring out to the port side where his First Officer, Glasov, was making notes on a pad. Rashkin glanced in the same direction and then his look riveted on what he saw in the distance. The lights of another vessel, and the flashing of a signal lamp.
'What the hell is that?' he demanded.
'Danish coast guard vessel,' Livanov replied, keeping his words to a minimum. It was one safe way he could express his intense dislike.
Tell it to go away.'
'You do not tell coast guard vessels to go away,' 'Why Danish?' rasped Rashkin irritably.
'Because the island of Bornholm, which we are approaching, happens to belong to Denmark. What is the signal, Glasov?'
'We are to heave to and identify ourselves,'
Without referring to Rashkin, the captain gave the order and the former only realised what was happening when he felt the vessel slowing down, noticed the absence of vibrations beneath his feet and realised Kometa was now stationary. Glasov was using a lamp to signal their reply when Viktor Rashkin blew his top.
'Who gave the order to stop the engines? I shall report this act of sabotage to Moscow,'
'Report away!' Livanov snapped. 'If you want our brief voyage to attract no attention we must adhere to international law, we are already in Danish territorial waters, we must comply with the coast guard requests,'
He broke off and walked rapidly to the window on the port side. Out of nowhere a float-plane had appeared, had landed on the calm black sea between the Soviet vessel and the coast guard ship. With its navigation lights on it had the appearance of a firefly and its actions were extraordinary. And now that Glasov had completed his reply to the Danish coast guard the lamp was flashing again, sending Kometa a new signal.
'What's that thing out there?' Rashkin asked.
'A sea-plane. I think the pilot must be drunk. Let's just hope he doesn't head our way.'
The tiny plane did indeed appear to be in the control — if that was the word — of someone who had imbibed too generously. The machine, scudding over the dark sheet of water, was now zigzagging. It was crazy, quite crazy. And so many things were beginning to happen at once.
That was the moment when Anderson lowered his Sikorsky over the bridge of Kometa. His arrival was heralded by a steadily increasing roar. Livanov pressed his face against the glass and stared up into the night. What he saw astounded him.
'Look above us, for God's sake!' he shouted at Rashkin.
The belly of the chopper, which seemed enormous in the night, was almost touching the top of the bridge. Livanov couldn't see any sign of how many men might be aboard the machine. Livanov could only see that if the pilot came down a few feet more there was going to be a holocaust on his bridge. To add to his agitation the din churned up by the Sikorsky's rotors was deafening. A hand grasped his arm; his First Officer, Glasov, was pulling him gently towards the rear of the bridge so he could get a better view of the Danish coast guard vessel. A searchlight slowly began to sweep the sea from aboard the coast guard ship. Glasov shouted in his captain's ear.
'That searchlight from the coast guard vessel is searching for a floating mine.'
' Oh, my God! '
Another voice shouted in his other ear, the voice of Viktor Rashkin, but Livanov detected for the first time a note of uncertainty in the Russian's voice. 'Start up the engines! Immediately!'
'You have seen what is happening just ahead of us and directly in our way?'
Rashkin followed the line of Livanov's stabbing finger. For the first time he noticed the fresh tactics of the drunken pilot with his bloody float-plane. The machine was crisscrossing over the course Kometa would be taking if the ship did start moving, moving at right-angles to the Soviet hydrofoil.
' And,' Livanov took great delight in informing this swine of a party boss, 'that searchlight is looking for a floating mine. You wish us to move before they have located it? You look forward to the outcome? BOOM,'
Rashkin was suspicious. Too much was happening at once. But he found the appalling din of the chopper's rotors made it hard to think straight. What was happening? He watched the probing finger of light, fighting to detach himself from his present surroundings, from the noise and the activity which was overwhelming his brain. Never permit the enemy to disorientate you. During the time when he had trained with the KGB his mentor, a veteran, had drilled the advice into his brain. But where was the enemy?
*
On the 'coast guard' vessel Regula there were very few lights — no more than the orthodox navigation lights. Harry Johnson, who had monitored the arrival of the KGB security squads in Trelleborg aboard the ferries from Sassnitz in East Germany, commanded Regula.
A lean, tense man of thirty, his face had a scowl of concentration as he stood close to the helmsman inside the wheelhouse and held his wrist-watch in his right hand. The chronometer on the bridge of Regula was accurate, God knew but it was his wrist-watch he had used to synchronise with all the other timepieces before he had left Firestorm.
Alongside him stood Jock Henderson clad in his wet suit, oxygen cylinder on his back, face-mask pulled up on his forehead, his automatic weapon clasped in its waterproof sheath. The explosives were inside a separate container strapped to his lower back.
'You'll be leaving soon, Jock,' Johnson said.
'I know.' Henderson was watching the sweep hand of his waterproof watch. He glanced up and checked
